Carlos castaneda who is

Within days, his "witches" vanished and were never heard from again; a Salon. Sign In. Edit Carlos Castaneda. Showing all 10 items. Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. New York: Oxford University Press, Don Juan didn't say anything at all. He kept staring at me, and that made me very uncomfortable. He seemed to have seen through me. For some reason I liked the way he looked at me. There was something very peculiar about the way he stares at people.

It was very remarkable. It was more that stare which made me go to see him than my interest in anthropological work. As an anthropologist, reality of consensus is only a very small segment of the total range of what we could feel as real. If we could learn to code reality or stimuli the way a shaman does, perhaps we could elongate our range of what we call real to a different interpretation. But the only way we have to code it is as hallucination. For fans of the literary con, it's been a great few years.

Currently, we have Richard Gere starring as Clifford Irving in "The Hoax," a film about the '70s novelist who penned a faux autobiography of Howard Hughes. Much has been written about the slippery boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, the publishing industry's responsibility for distinguishing between the two, and the potential damage to readers. There's been, however, hardly a mention of the 20th century's most successful literary trickster: Carlos Castaneda.

If this name draws a blank for readers under 30, all they have to do is ask their parents. His 12 books, supposedly based on meetings with a mysterious Indian shaman, don Juan, made the author, a graduate student in anthropology, a worldwide celebrity. Under don Juan's tutelage, Castaneda took peyote, talked to coyotes, turned into a crow, and learned how to fly.

All this took place in what don Juan called "a separate reality. During his lifetime, his books sold at least 10 million copies. Castaneda was viewed by many as a compelling writer, and his early books received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Time called them "beautifully lucid" and remarked on a "narrative power unmatched in other anthropological studies.

Richard Jennings, an attorney who became closely involved with Castaneda in the '90s, was studying at Stanford in the early '70s when he read the first two don Juan books. I wasn't looking for metaphors.

The books' status as serious anthropology went almost unchallenged for five years. Skepticism increased in after Joyce Carol Oates, in a letter to the New York Times, expressed bewilderment that a reviewer had accepted Castaneda's books as nonfiction. The next year, Time published a cover story revealing that Castaneda had lied extensively about his past. Over the next decade, several researchers, most prominently Richard de Mille, son of the legendary director, worked tirelessly to demonstrate that Castaneda's work was a hoax.

In spite of this exhaustive debunking, the don Juan books still sell well. BookScan, a Nielsen company that tracks book sales, reports that three of Castaneda's most popular titles, "A Separate Reality," "Journey to Ixtlan" and "Tales of Power," sold a total of 10, copies in None of Castaneda's titles have ever gone out of print -- an impressive achievement for any author.

Today, Simon and Schuster, Castaneda's main publisher, still classifies his books as nonfiction. It could be argued that this label doesn't matter since everyone now knows don Juan was a fictional creation. But everyone doesn't, and the trust that some readers have invested in these books leads to a darker story that has received almost no coverage in the mainstream press.

Castaneda, who disappeared from the public view in , began in the last decade of his life to organize a secretive group of devoted followers. His tools were his books and Tensegrity, a movement technique he claimed had been passed down by 25 generations of Toltec shamans. A corporation, Cleargreen, was set up to promote Tensegrity; it held workshops attended by thousands.

Novelist and director Bruce Wagner, a member of Castaneda's inner circle, helped produce a series of instructional videos. Cleargreen continues to operate to this day, promoting Tensegrity and Castaneda's teachings through workshops in Southern California, Europe and Latin America.

At the heart of Castaneda's movement was a group of intensely devoted women, all of whom were or had been his lovers. They were known as the witches, and two of them, Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar, vanished the day after Castaneda's death, along with Cleargreen president Amalia Marquez and Tensegrity instructor Kylie Lundahl.

A few weeks later, Patricia Partin, Castaneda's adopted daughter as well as his lover, also disappeared. In February , a skeleton found in Death Valley, Calif. Some former Castaneda associates suspect the missing women committed suicide.

They cite remarks the women made shortly before vanishing, and point to Castaneda's frequent discussion of suicide in private group meetings.

Achieving transcendence through a death nobly chosen, they maintain, had long been central to his teachings. Castaneda was born in and came to the United States in from Peru. He worked a series of odd jobs and took classes at Los Angeles Community College in philosophy, literature and creative writing.

Most who knew him then recall a brilliant, hilarious storyteller with mesmerizing brown eyes. He was short some say 5-foot-2; others 5-foot-5 and self-conscious about having his picture taken. Along with his then wife Margaret Runyan whose memoir, "A Magical Journey With Carlos Castaneda," he would later try to suppress he became fascinated by the occult. According to Runyan, she and Castaneda would hold long bull sessions, drinking wine with other students.

One night a friend remarked that neither the Buddha nor Jesus ever wrote anything down. Their teachings had been recorded by disciples, who could have changed things or made them up.

Together, she and Castaneda conducted unsuccessful ESP experiments. Runyan worked for the phone company, and Castaneda's first attempt at a book was an uncompleted nonfiction manuscript titled "Dial Operator. One of the assignments was to interview an Indian.

He got an "A" for his paper, in which he spoke to an unnamed Native American about the ceremonial use of jimson weed. But Castaneda was broke and soon dropped out. He worked in a liquor store and drove a taxi. He began to disappear for days at a time, telling Runyan he was going to the desert. The couple separated, but soon afterward Castaneda adopted C. And, for seven years, he worked on the manuscript that was to become "The Teachings of Don Juan.

Eventually he relents, allowing Carlos to ingest the sacred cactus buds. Carlos sees a transparent black dog, which, don Juan later tells him, is Mescalito, a powerful supernatural being. His appearance is a sign that Carlos is "the chosen one" who's been picked to receive "the teachings. Carlos has strange experiences that, in spite of don Juan's admonitions, he continues to think of as hallucinations.

In one instance, Carlos turns into a crow and flies. Afterward, an argument ensues: Is there such a thing as objective reality? Or is reality just perceptions and different, equally valid ways of describing them? Toward the book's end, Carlos again encounters Mescalito, whom he now accepts as real, not a hallucination. In "The Teachings," Castaneda tried to follow the conventions of anthropology by appending a page "structural analysis.

He'd become disillusioned with another hero, Timothy Leary, who supposedly mocked Castaneda when they met at a party, earning his lifelong enmity. In , he took his manuscript to professor Meighan. Castaneda was disappointed when Meighan told him it would work better as a trade book than as a scholarly monograph.

The editor was impressed but had doubts about its authenticity. Inundated by good reports from the UCLA anthropology department, according to Runyan, Quebec was convinced and "The Teachings" was published in the spring of Runyan wrote that "the University of California Press, fully cognizant that a nation of drug-infatuated students was out there, moved it into California bookstores with a vengeance.

In his memoir, "Another Life," Korda recounts their first meeting. Korda was told to wait in a hotel parking lot.

I had seldom, if ever, liked anybody so much so quickly It wasn't so much what Castaneda had to say as his presence -- a kind of charm that was partly subtle intelligence, partly a real affection for people, and partly a kind of innocence, not of the naive kind but of the kind one likes to suppose saints, holy men, prophets and gurus have. Don Juan declines the gift, suggesting he'd use it as toilet paper. A new cycle of apprenticeship begins, in which don Juan tries to teach Carlos how to "see.

New characters appear, most importantly don Juan's friend and fellow sorcerer don Genaro. In "A Separate Reality" and the two books that follow, "Journey to Ixtlan" and "Tales of Power," numerous new concepts are introduced, including "becoming inaccessible," "erasing personal history" and "stopping the world.

There are also displays of magic. Don Genaro is at one moment standing next to Carlos; at the next, he's on top of a mountain. Don Juan uses unseen powers to help Carlos start his stalled car. And he tries to show him how to be a warrior -- a being who, like an enlightened Buddhist, has eliminated the ego, but who, in a more Nietzschean vein, knows he's superior to regular humans, who lead wasted, pointless lives.

Don Juan also tries to teach Carlos how to enter the world of dreams, the "separate reality," also referred to as the "nagual," a Spanish word taken from the Aztecs.

Later, Castaneda would shift the word's meaning, making it stand not only for the separate reality but also for a shaman, like don Juan and, eventually, Castaneda himself. In "Journey to Ixtlan," Carlos starts a new round of apprenticeship. Don Juan tells him they'll no longer use drugs. These were only necessary when Carlos was a beginner.

Many consider "Ixtlan," which served as Castaneda's Ph. It also made him a millionaire. At the book's conclusion, Carlos talks to a luminous coyote. But he isn't yet ready to enter the nagual. If he has the courage to leap, he'll at last be a full-fledged sorcerer. This time Carlos doesn't turn back. He jumps into the abyss. All four books were lavishly praised. Michael Murphy, a founder of Esalen, remarked that the "essential lessons don Juan has to teach are the timeless ones that have been taught by the great sages of India.

In , anthropologist Paul Riesman reviewed Castaneda's first three books in the New York Times Book Review, writing that "Castaneda makes it clear that the teachings of don Juan do tell us something of how the world really is. In his unpublished article, La Barre denounced Castaneda's writing as "pseudo-profound deeply vulgar pseudo-ethnography. Contacted recently, Roger Jellinek, the editor who commissioned both reviews, explained his decision.

Hence the second commission to Paul Riesman, son of Harvard sociologist David Riesman, and a brilliant rising anthropologist. Incidentally, in all my eight years at the NYTBR, that's the only occasion I can recall of a review being commissioned twice. Riesman's glowing review was soon followed by Oates' letter to the editor, in which she argued that the books were obvious works of fiction.

Then, in , Time correspondent Sandra Burton found that Castaneda had lied about his military service, his father's occupation, his age and his nation of birth Peru not Brazil. No one contributed more to Castaneda's debunking than Richard de Mille. De Mille, who held a Ph. In a recent interview, he remarked that because he wasn't associated with a university, he could tell the story straight. But a hoax that, he said, supported their theories, which de Mille summed up succinctly: "Reality doesn't exist.

It's all what people say to each other. The books were also filled with implausible details. For example, while "incessantly sauntering across the sands in seasons when De Mille also uncovered numerous instances of plagiarism. Lewis to papers in obscure anthropology journals. In one example, de Mille first quotes a passage by a mystic, Yogi Ramacharaka: "The Human Aura is seen by the psychic observer as a luminous cloud, egg-shaped, streaked by fine lines like stiff bristles standing out in all directions.

And his arms and legs are like luminous bristles bursting out in all directions. Perhaps the most glaring evidence was that the Yaqui don't use peyote, and don Juan was supposedly a Yaqui shaman teaching a "Yaqui way of knowledge. Some anthropologists have disagreed with de Mille on certain points.

But he's an even fiercer critic than de Mille, condemning Castaneda for the effect his stories have had on Native peoples. Following the publication of "The Teachings," thousands of pilgrims descended on Yaqui territory. When they discovered that the Yaqui don't use peyote, but that the Huichol people do, they headed to the Huichol homeland in Southern Mexico, where, according to Fikes, they caused serious disruption.

Fikes recounts with outrage the story of one Huichol elder being murdered by a stoned gringo. Among anthropologists, there's no longer a debate. Professor William W. Kelly, chairman of Yale's anthropology department, told me, "I doubt you'll find an anthropologist of my generation who regards Castaneda as anything but a clever con man. It was a hoax, and surely don Juan never existed as anything like the figure of his books. Perhaps to many it is an amusing footnote to the gullibility of naive scholars, although to me it remains a disturbing and unforgivable breach of ethics.

Instead, he went into seclusion, at least as far as the press was concerned he still went to Hollywood parties. Claiming he was complying with don Juan's instruction to become "inaccessible," he no longer allowed himself to be photographed, and in the same year the existence of the Nixon tapes was made public he decided that recordings of any sort were forbidden. He also severed ties to his past; after attending C. And he made don Juan disappear. When "The Second Ring of Power" was published in , readers learned that sometime between the leap into the abyss at the end of "Tales of Power" and the start of the new book, don Juan had vanished, evanescing into a ball of light and entering the nagual.

His seclusion also helped Castaneda, now in his late 40s, conceal the alternative family he was starting to form. Castaneda died April 27 at his home in Westwood, according to entertainment lawyer Deborah Drooz, a friend of Castaneda and the executor of his estate. The cause of death was liver cancer.

No funeral was held; no public service of any kind took place. The author was cremated at once and his ashes were spirited away to Mexico, according to the Culver City mortuary that handled his remains. He leaves behind a will, due to be probated in Los Angeles next month, and a death certificate fraught with dubious information. The few people who may benefit from his rich copyrights were told of the death, Drooz said, but none chose to alert the media.

The doctor who attended him in his final days, Angelica Duenas, would not discuss her secretive patient. He was born Christmas Day in Sao Paolo, Brazil, or Cajamarca, Peru, depending on which version of his autobiographical accounts can be believed. He was an inveterate and unrepentant liar about the statistical details of his life, from his birthplace to his birth date, and even his given name remains in some doubt.

Whoever he was, whatever his background, Castaneda galvanized the world 30 years ago. Hoping to study the effects of certain medicinal plants, Castaneda said he stopped in an Arizona border town and there, in a Greyhound bus depot, met an old Yaqui Indian from Sonora, Mexico, named Juan Matus, a brujo, or sorcerer, or shaman, who used powerful hallucinogens to initiate the student into an occult world with origins dating back more than 2, years.

The thesis, published in by the University of California Press, became an international bestseller, striking just the right note at the peak of the psychedelic s. But the old Indian could not be found, which set off widespread speculation that Castaneda was the author of an elaborate, if ingenious, hoax.